Hello Kitty Island Adventure review – a tropical paradise

As quickly as I heard about this recreation, I knew that I needed to play it. Anybody who’s met me in particular person is aware of that I’m an enormous Sanrio fan, on account of my Little Twin Stars and Pompompurin tattoos and different equipment. Lots of people within the West have by no means heard of Sanrio, regardless of Hiya Kitty being large right here within the UK and within the US. However there are literally thousands of devoted Sanrio followers all over the world and this recreation is ideal for us.

Hiya Kitty Island Journey is an Apple Arcade-exclusive life simulator recreation the place you design your personal Sanrio-esque mascot and befriend an enormous solid of in style characters on a tropical island after the cake-baking machine in your flight malfunctions, inflicting you all to leap to security. If that’s not sufficient to attract you in from the start, I’m undecided what whimsy is.

Regardless of the sport’s title, the story revolves round My Melody and her reward store Small Present, Huge Smile (Sanrio’s slogan). She’s invited to this mysterious resort island to open a store there, so the entire crew together with Pochacco, Keroppi, Badtz-Maru, and Hiya Kitty herself hop aboard a airplane to affix her. Equally to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you begin off in a comparatively small space and uncover new locations, objects, and characters alongside the best way.

Unsurprisingly for a Sanrio recreation, the principle mechanic in Hiya Kitty Island Journey is friendship. Progressing the principle story and unlocking cosmetics depends on build up your friendship with the island’s numerous inhabitants by giving them presents from classes they like. For instance, My Melody loves candy issues and Keroppi loves critters. Every character’s character and dialogue feels distinctive and real, making it much more rewarding for followers to talk to their favourite Sanrio mascots in-game and get to know them higher.

Having mentioned that, you don’t want any prior data of Sanrio to get caught in. The sport assumes nothing in regards to the participant, presenting every character to you as when you’ve by no means met them earlier than. I discovered this handy as a result of as a lot as I already learn about Kuromi and My Melody for instance, I’m much less aware of Badtz-Maru and Hangyodon. However now, Badtz-Maru is slowly making his approach up my listing of favorites due to our in-game conversations.

Hiya Kitty Island Journey has every thing you’d anticipate from a life sim recreation – fishing, crafting, cooking (a lot cooking, I’m in love), useful resource gathering, bug catching, you title it! There’s a lot to do and discover however I don’t really feel any stress to finish it multi function go. One of many causes I don’t get on with Stardew Valley is that the sport throws so many large quests at you directly, however Hiya Kitty Island Journey is considerably extra chill, which I recognize.

A characteristic that I wasn’t anticipating to search out although was the puzzle rooms. The sport contains a mixture of story quest-related puzzles that you would be able to full in single-player mode, and multiplayer puzzles that require the assistance of a good friend to finish. In the event you’re frightened about discovering folks that will help you, I’d advocate trying out the official Discord server. The group of followers and devs has made my expertise with the sport thus far extremely easy and there’s a channel devoted to discovering recreation companions to play multiplayer with.

I’m at the moment enjoying on an iPhone SE 2022 and haven’t encountered any efficiency points, however my telephone does get extremely sizzling whereas enjoying and loses cost fairly quickly. It’s arduous to say how a lot of that is the sport and the way a lot is the gadget, however that is one thing to think about you probably have an older mannequin.

I truthfully discover it fairly arduous to level out the negatives as a result of there actually are only a few. I personally discover the on-screen joystick to be somewhat unwieldy to regulate, however when you’re extra used to this form of gameplay on a telephone otherwise you use a controller, it in all probability gained’t hassle you as a lot. A variety of the missions can really feel very fetch-quest heavy which irritated me somewhat originally, however now that I’ve unlocked quick journey it’s a lot much less of a priority.

Based mostly on the sheer quantity and high quality of gameplay accessible in Hiya Kitty Island Journey from launch and the promise of recent characters and UX updates as quickly as August in model 1.1, I’d argue that for devoted Sanrio followers, this recreation is definitely worth the subscription worth of Apple Arcade. I imply it! If Sunblink is ready to maintain common updates, this recreation has the potential to be to Sanrio followers what Animal Crossing: New Horizons was to folks in lockdown. In the event you already pay for Apple Arcade, I extremely counsel giving it a go – there’s really one thing for everybody and it’s simply so lovely.

That’s it for our Hiya Kitty Island Journey evaluate. In the event you’re after extra Sanrio goodness, take a look at our My Hiya Kitty Cafe codes information or be taught extra in regards to the new Tamagotchi Hiya Kitty editions.